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Monday, December 29, 2014

Christmas 2014 has come and gone and our bellies have finally had time to rest so we can reflect on our holidays this year! With a combination of work parties, friends gathering and the traditional Christmas day family dinner, we can safely say we need a rest from prepping food for a large group of people. Thankfully, we had some help this year from Real Food Toronto and Toronto Don Valley Hotel!

Two of the biggest struggles for us every Christmas is braving the supermarkets close to Christmas time when it's almost like playing sardines and prepping a turkey dinner for a big group... It's always a mission to figure out when to put the food in to make sure everything is still piping hot when your guests arrive, not to mention the turkey itself needs a good 4-6 hours of TLC in your not so industrial size oven!

Luckily for us, both of our problems were made a slightly easier. If you've never been on RealFoodToronto's website, you are missing out. The are an online organic food and grocery delivery service and their name says it all. It's real food that's delivered to your door. You don't have to worry about going to ten different grocery stores to find exactly what you need. You can avoid the lines at supermarkets and do it all from the comfort of your home and in your pajamas.

Everything you ordered is delivered straight to your door or in our case... to work because you need to make sure someone signs for it! You can order anything from high quality raw meats to prepared foods such as quinoa salad, veggies, dairy, bakery, pantry etc... pretty much anything you can think of!

You can order from RealFoodToronto any time of the year, especially useful on days where you just don't feel like going out or you would really just rather spend your weekends watching TV the way we like!

This past Christmas, we also had the pleasure of getting a turkey dinner catered to our annual dinner with our friends. Not only did it save us many hours in the kitchen, it gave us an opportunity to catch up with old friends without having to worry about basting a turkey every 30 minutes.

Toronto's Don Valley Hotel's "Turkey-To-Go" is a fully catered turkey dinner, which easily serves 8-10 people and takes away all the cooking and cleaning that you have to do! We had 10 people with leftover so it's definitely capable of feeding more and the cost of a fully catered meal is $200 - that's $20 per person.

A typical "Turkey To Go" catered dinner includes:

- rolls and butter

- carrot & fennel soup

- mixed greens with a balsamic dressing

- roasted turkey sliced & separate into white/dark meat

- traditional stuffing and cranberry sauce

- garlic mashed potatoes

- buttered & roasted market vegetables

- bread pudding

Everything was cooked well and delivered fresh and hot. The portion they offer for 8-10 people was more than enough for our entire group of ten (5 females/5males)!

The only thing we had to prepare this year for our annual dinner was a few appetizers and games that we wanted to play after dinner. Easy, right?

Thank you Real Food Toronto and Toronto Don Valley Hotel for making our Christmas a little less stressful and more enjoyable this year!